Affiliate Marketing Fail

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In the above picture, you can see the “Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville” in Grand Cayman.  Grand Cayman is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever had the opportunity to visit.  It was also one of the last places I expected to see “affiliate” marketing at work, in the “off-line” world.

Last week, while on my Disney cruise, we stopped in Grand Cayman as one of our ports.  My 5-year old son has tried snorkeling at Disney’s Castaway Cay island, so we thought we’d try a snorkeling excursion at Grand Cayman — a significant bump up from a little lagoon at Castaway Cay.

On the way back to the dock, the two dive-masters provided some restaurant recommendations and one “avoid at all costs” warning.  Stay out of Margaritaville!  Why?  They don’t provide discounts to the dive-masters.

Now, these guys take out approximately 50 tourists on a single boat, three times per day, on a fleet of six boats (and this is just one of the many dive operations on Grand Cayman).  On just this fleet, that is almost 1,000 per day that are told to avoid Margaritaville!  These guys are your real world affiliate marketers and likely the Zero Agents (a term from Trust Agents — essentially a primary connector) for this island.  Heck, they even provided full-disclosure by noting that they get discounts at the restaurants they recommended!

I know Jimmy Buffet has built a conglomerate of successful businesses, but this is a huge failure on his part!  All you have to do is provide a small discount to a small community on this one island (a community, BTW, that has immense opportunity to greatly influence your customer base) to produce good-will and recommendations.  Now, you’re alienating customers and possibly damaging your reputation.

Could this carry over to his concert attendance?  Beer sales?  Book sales?  Doubtful, but is the possibility worth the savings of a 10% discount to a small number of locals?  Not in my opinion, but then, I don’t have restaurants in every Caribbean island, either.

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